Truth Bomb Tuesday: unpacking the tyranny of expectations
One of the big challenges with breaking free and living life on your own terms is making peace with other people’s expectations.
Many of us will feel like we’re constantly ‘dimming our light’ to keep the peace and keep other people feeling comfortable.
We might feel that we need to keep ourselves poor, because our parents were poor their whole live, and they would resent us if we showed them that freedom was available all along.
Or our partner might resent our emotional side, and we might feel a need that we need to ‘tone it down’ around them.
Or your boss might feel like your unique creative flair isn’t really appropriate for the office he wants to run like a battle-cruiser. “Don’t you have any white or grey shirts?”
We dim our lights – become a less fully-expressed version of ourselves – in order to keep the peace and not rock the boat.
This is not a strategy for the long run.
Because over time, resentments build.
If we feel that our partner can’t handle us at our most loose and fun-loving, and that’s how we want to live, then we begin to resent them.
But there’s a piece of the puzzle missing in this story, and this is not where the first work of repair starts.
Because the truth is that we dim our own lights.
And sure, we’re doing it for others and for the peace. But at some point, we are making the choice to do X to achieve Y – dim our lights to achieve peace.
That’s a choice that we make. No one else.
And look, that can be ok. Sometimes it’s a rational choice – a sensible evaluation of the realities.
But if we do not acknowledge to ourselves that this choice has an expense – that there can be a sense of sadness with not feeling fully welcome in the world, then we can start to resent ourselves.
AND, if it stops being a choice, and just gets hard-coded into pattern – a default way of being in the world – then we have given up our agency, and resentment builds.
And so the first work of repair is with ourselves.
It’s with acknowledging that we have had to / are having to make choices that do not align with our highest happiness.
It’s with caring for the part of us that feels like it’s missing out – “I’m really sorry you have to give up your rainbow work shorts. I know how happy they make you.”
And it’s about bringing your strategic power to bear on working collaboratively towards a solution. “Let’s just stick it out in grey-town for six more months, and I’ll find us a new job, or enrol in one of Dymphna’s programs and fast track retirement.”
It’s about caring for yourself.
If you can do this, my experience is that you will feel better about the whole situation, and will then be able to act from a place of strategic clarity, rather than reactive resentment.
And that’s a good thing.
DB.